Book Prizes are awarded after commencement for first-year or sophomore students who have submitted exceptional essays during the academic year. Past recipients are:
NATHAN BROWN BOOK PRIZE – In honor of Nathan Brown, a member of the class of 1827 who was a distinguished linguist and missionary to several Asian countries, the department of history awards a book to the first-year student or sophomore who writes the best essay in a course in African, Asian, Latin American, or Middle Eastern history.
2018-2019
Kofi Lee-Berman ’22 – Subjects, Objects, Bodies: Subaltern Biopolitics in Colonial Bombay – (Kapadia – HIST 117 – Bombay/Mumbai: Making of a Modern Metropolis)
2017-2018
Robert P. Rock ’20 – Mongol Policy and the Debasement of Cilician Royal Authority – (Reinhardt – HIST 115 – The World of the Mongol Empire)
2016-2017
Nils A. Horn ’19 – The Apocalyptic Wave – (Mutongi – HIST 304 – South Africa and Apartheid)
2015-2016
Sumun S. Iyer ’18 – Tenuous Connections: The Lives of Medieval Indian Merchants – (Kapadia – HIST 391 – When India Was the World: Trade, Travel, and History in the Indian Ocean)
2014-2015
Soha Sanchorawala ’18 – Racialized Bipartisanism As an Agent of Colonial Capitalism: Guyana from the 1950s – 1970s – (Singham – HIST 248 – The Caribbean: From Slavery to Independence)
2013-2014
Laura Elmendorf ’17 – The Truth Behind the Mongol Yoke (Reinhardt – HIST 115 – The World of the Mongol Empire)
2012-2013
Elliot M. Chester ’15 – “Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?” An Analysis of U.S. Perceptions of Japanese Professional Baseball, 1989-1994 (Siniawer – HIST 321 – History of U.S. – Japan Relations)
2011-2012
Adrian A. Mitchell ’15 – The IPC in Iraq: 1958-1972 (Bernhardsson – HIST 310 – Iraq and Iran in the Twentieth Century)
2010-2011
Joseph Leidy ’13, – “Our Job Remains to Liberate Them”: Palestinian Women and National Community (Bernhardsson – HIST 305 – Nationalism and Nation Building in Middle East)
2009-2010
Jonathan Elias Wosen ’13 – Where “Fish and Fetish” Meet “Darkest Africa”: A Critical Look at the Historiographies of Marie Kingsley and Henry Stanley (Mutongi – HIST 104 – Travel Narratives and African History)
2008-2009
David Anthony Samuelson ’12 – Bidding Farewell to the West and All It Meant for Japan: Japan’s Departure from the League of Nations (Siniawer – HIST 119 – The Japanese Empire)
2007-2008
William Lee ’11 – “Under Siege”: British and Japanese Responses to Chinese Nationalism (Reinhardt – HIST 117T – China & the West, 1800-1900)
RICHARD AGER NEWHALL BOOK PRIZE – In honor of Richard Ager Newhall, distinguished historian and teacher of history at Williams College, 1924-1956, the department of history awards a book to the first-year student or sophomore who writes the best essay in an introductory course in European History.
2018-2019
Diana Gonzalez-Castillo ’22 – The Great Sepoy Adventure: Examining Native Indian Soldiers’ Role in the First Anglo-Afghan War (Waters – HIST 137 – Victorian Britan and the Anglo-Afghan War)
2017-2018
Will Abersek ’21 – ‘Nature its selfe cannot erre’: Metaphors, Monsters, and Bodies in Hobbes’s Leviathan (Bevilacqua – HIST 331 – European Intellectual History from Aquinas to Kant)
2016-2017
Alden M. Taylor ’19 – Separating the Real from the Fake: Postmodernism in the World of Professor Chris Waters (Siniawer – HIST 301C – Approaching the Past: Practices of Modern History)
2015-2016
Liam J. Allbritain ’19 – Rambling Generals or Concerned Patriots? Reading Perceptions of the Military in Victorian Britain (Waters – HIST 137 – Victorian Britain and the Anglo-Afghan Wars)
2014-2015
Thomas H. Riley ’18 – Revolution As an Actor in Bely’s Petersburg (Wagner – HIST 140T – Fin-de-Siècle Russia: Cultural Splendor, Imperial Decay)
2013-2014
Jacques P.G. Guyot ’17 –Everybody Lies: Sonthonax, Brissot, Condorcet and Their Role in the French Abolitionist Movement (Singham – Hist 129 – Blacks, Jews, and Women in the Age of the French Revolution)
2012-2013
Emma Martucci ’15 – The Grey Space Chronicled (Garbarini – HIST 490T – Memory, History, and the Extermination of the Jews of Europe: Dangerous History)
2011-2012
Jacob Addelson ’14 – Bernhardt, Hamlet, Paradox (Fishzon HIST 334 – Sex and Psyche: A Cultural History of Fin-de-Siècle’)
2010-2011
Kwan Y. (Jenny) Tang ’13 – Reading Diderot through Postcolonial Historiography: The Colonial and Slavery Problem in Enlightenment France (Revill – HIST 331 – The Enlightenment)
2009-2010
Charlotte Kiechel ’12, – The “Final Solution” to Lebensraum (Siniawer – HIST 390 – The 1930s in Comparative Perspective: Germany, Italy, and Japan)
2008-2009
Hilary R. Ledwell ’12 – The Ritual Moment of Germaine de Staël (Revill – HIST 332 – The Revolutionary Tradition in France, 1789-1871)
2007-2008
Samantha T. Demby ’11 – Calm Surfaces, Mysterious Depths: John Singer Sargent’s Fumée d’ambre gris and the Paradoxical Nature of Victorian Psychology (Kohut – HIST 336 – Victorian Psychology: From the Phrenologists to Freud)
THEODORE CLARKE SMITH BOOK PRIZE – In honor of Theodore Clarke Smith, distinguished historian and teacher of history at Williams College, 1903-1938 and 1943-44, the department of history awards a book to the first-year student or sophomore who writes the best essay in a course in American History.
2018-2019
Emma M. Neil ’22 – Mutual Necessity: Communities and their Leaders in Reconstruction Georgia – (Long – HIST 167 – Let Freedom Ring? African Americans and Emancipation)
2017-2018
Darin T. Li ’21 – The Agitators: Williams College and the Anti-Slavery Movement, 1820-1830 – (Dew – HIST 164 – Slavery in the American South)
2016-2017
Baladine Pierce ’20 – In the Family: Sexual Exploitation and Family in the Lives of James Hammond and Thomas Jefferson – (Dew – HIST 164 – Slavery in the American South)
2015-2016
Ziev Dalsheim-Kahane ’19 – Parenting and Childhood in Emancipation – (Long – HIST 167 – Let Freedom Ring? African Americans and Emancipation)
2014-2015
Eleanor R. Wachtel ’17 – Empires on the West – (Merrill – HIST 372 – The North American West: Histories and Meanings)
2013-2014
Wendy Wiberg ’17 – In Their Own Words: The Battle of Bunker Hill, Rhetoric, and the American Revolution (Spero – HIST 157 – From Powhatan to Lincoln: Discovering Leadership in a New World)
2012-2013
Cooper Zelnick ’15 – True of Spirit, False of Word (Spero – HIST 157 – From Powhatan to Lincoln: Discovering Leadership in a New World)
2011-2012
Joan Brunetta ’15 – The Past is the Future: The Life and Leadership of Horace Mann (Spero – HIST 157 – From Powhatan to Lincoln: Discovering Leadership in a New World)
2010-2011
No Winner
2009-2010
No Winner
2008-2009
William Lee ’11 – An American Pan-Africanist in Paris (Singham- HIST 292 – Africans in Europe: Slaves, Abolitionists, Artists, Intellectuals, and Migrants in the Modern Era)
2007-2008
Eva Breitenbach ’10 – Pictures of Thoughts’: Memory and Iconography in the Work of Vik Muniz (Wong – HIST 301F – Approaching the Past: Remembering American History)